What are you...speaking? (Formerly It's Coming)

[MNOWAX]

6/12/2012; It Is Coming:

Today is a week away. Other people have been talking about it. Patrons of this site will enjoy it. Go to the limit. Let's Do This! Either way, fun will be had by all. Really, this time I promise!

Since we are a world of people how does each region of the world affect our puzzling in general?
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Scurra]

Of course, from where I'm sitting, it sounds as though we're waiting until December...


(The comedian Stewart Lee has a very good routine about the terrorist attacks that happened on the Ninth of November, and how the London bombers clearly chose the 7th of July to avoid any dating confusions of any kind.)
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_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[MNOWAX]

you and your Brits way of doing things....

how do you say aluminum?
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[3iff]

AL-U-MIN-I-UM

For ages I couldn't work out what alu-min-um was...

Why is it that Americans have to have the biggest everything (sort of) but need to chop letters out of words to make them smaller?

(I thought it was going to the the 6th of December too)

[MNOWAX]

[Scurra]

No, you clearly took the second I out of Aluminium. Pretty much the entire civilised world spells it the logical way.

For many years, we (in the UK) had two modern dance groups, who were known as the Cholmondeleys (all-female) and the Featherstonehaughs (all-male.) If you don't know how they are pronounced, you would almost certainly never guess.

And one of my favourites is the town called Loughborough. Which is generally pronounced Luff-boro, but which is often called Loo-ga-bo-roo-ga...
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_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[referee]

Englishmen and Americans: Separated by a common language.
_________________
Jan 21st, 2008: The pillaging continues.
Mar 4th, 2008: Rest in Peace, Gary Gygax. May your dice always roll a natural 20 wherever you are.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[MatthewV]

I avoid saying aluminium because I usually pronounce it "incorrectly". I am glad to hear my way is just British.
And it tough to get around saying aluminium. Usually I just refer to it as "6061", a common machining alloy.

[MNOWAX]

so ummm..

yeah its coming lol
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[itisally]

wait.. what is comming?
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I could agree with you, but then we would both be wrong.

[The Great Crep'er]

[itisally]

oh, well in that case... I am so excited?
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I could agree with you, but then we would both be wrong.

[MNOWAX]

you'd think that since this was cross posted in VSP, there's gotta be a puzzle in that opening post SOMEWHERE.
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Amb]

MNOWAX converted to Aztecism, and that's the day he plans to end the world unless we can solve his nefarious puzzle involving logic, skill, colour recognition, and general inanity.

[MatthewV]

Hmmm it even made it to the main page. I guess this is serious.

[The Great Crep'er]

[MatthewV]

New Zealand isn't England.

[MNOWAX]

[Amb]

If the Americans had their way, they would be known as the "Nited States of America". Ban the U's!

[grz*]

Let's gou four brouke and make it "Knighted."

[3iff]

Ah, just found my favourite bit of text to torture Americans.

"The tough, dough-faced ploughboy coughed and hiccoughed his way through Loughborough."

I would really LOVE to hear an American try to pronounce that lot.

[Jedo the Jedi]

You know, we aren't stupid. Minus the ridiculous town name at the end, that sentence is easily read aloud.
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Paragon Tally: 19 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[3iff]

It's not about stupidity...just the different way we pronounce words.

That's the one I was thinking of....lever and fever. Do you pronounce them the same way?

[Jedo the Jedi]

I just felt that sentence was more supposed to be "tricky" than just a difference of pronunciation. This one is way better.

Most Americans pronounce those differently.

I wish I knew where the poem about the difficulty of English is.
_________________
Paragon Tally: 19 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[3iff]

I got a copy of it this morning...thanks to Dented Ford.

Here:

English is Tough Stuff

Dearest creature in creation
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I: Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar.
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamor
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and droll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangor.
Soul but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, knob, bosom, transom, oath.
Through the differences seem little,
We say actual, but also victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, Conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succor, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye.
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, brass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging.
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here, but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation - think of Psyche!
Is it paling, stout and spiky?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough -
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advise is to give it up!!!

[Sentran]

A friend of mine describes trouble with pronunciation in one word: snowplow.
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Sentran
"Speaking of double negatives, I haven't read greylab yet today." - Lifeinmomland

[Zag]

I saw once a similarly-themed poem, but it took the opposite approach: Every couplet looked like it would rhyme (i.e. had the same ending), but didn't. Does anyone know where to find it? (My 2 minutes of googling failed to turn it up, which gives you the challenge to prove your Google Fu better than mine.)
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[referee]

Even Edgar Allan Poe was caught by this one: 'Prophet!' said I, 'Thing of evil! Prophet still if bird or devil...

And America the Beautiful has skies / majesties, and proved / loved.
_________________
Jan 21st, 2008: The pillaging continues.
Mar 4th, 2008: Rest in Peace, Gary Gygax. May your dice always roll a natural 20 wherever you are.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[Dented Ford]

[Zag]

[novice]

Loose doesn't rhyme with choose?

Edit: Ah, sonority sonance voicedness???

Clearly I master neither english phonetics nor its terminology.

[Scurra]

I really hate puzzles that depend upon things like reading something out loud - even a minor dialect difference can make some things all but impossible to decipher.


(As for poems - somewhere I have a copy of a poem that was written in about 1850 or so to mark the occasion of a politician of the time being elevated to the peerage and becoming Lord Houghton, and it's all about how exactly you were supposed to pronounce his name...)
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[MNOWAX]

since this thread was derailed i'm renaming it and moving it into Off topic.

I agree with you Scurra, I know I have had an issue or two with pronunciations in terms of puzzles.
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[The Great Crep'er]

Formerly it was coming. [/englishprofessor]

[referee]

Formerly... formerly... former L-Y.
_________________
Jan 21st, 2008: The pillaging continues.
Mar 4th, 2008: Rest in Peace, Gary Gygax. May your dice always roll a natural 20 wherever you are.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[MNOWAX]

bunch of english professors all of a sudden...

Opinions on the Oxford comma, anyone?
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Jedo the Jedi]

[itisally*]

I remember when I took poetry we had three diffrent kinds of rhyme: direct, slant, and sight.

And I hate commas in general. for instance in MLA style writting I have a ball, stick and shield. However, in APA it must be a ball, stick, and shield.

When I get a paper back that says I need to add commas I ditch all the rule books and add them all over the place. It seems to make them happy.

[Death Mage]

whaut, ius, wiuth, aull, thius, taulk, ouf, extrau, letteurs, aund, commaus, anywauy?
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* These senseless ramblings brought to you by Insanity™. If you just can't figure the dang thing out, it must be Insanity™.
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[The Great Crep'er]

What am I speaking? Why, words, of course!